Pronounced: ray-show-FAY, noun
Notes: A fun word to slip into conversation
Yesterday’s word
The word raddled means
- being in a state of confusion; lacking composure
- broken-down; worn
First usage
Our word came into English in the late 1600s
Background / Comments
As you can see from the definitions above, the first one is about the same as the word “rattled”. Our word is the (much) older word; “rattled” did not show up until the early 1900s; I suspect that someone heard “raddled” and wrote “rattled” and thus a new word was formed. However, the second definition doesn’t really seem to fit; it is theorized that it comes from a red coloring used to mark animals; the coloring was called “raddle”. From this word raddled came to mean “heavily made up with rouge”; a person in such a state would look older and more haggard.
Richard's Vocabulary Word-of-the-Day 